


East Englewood

by tiamatv



Series: South Side Swing [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: (It might be trying to grow a little bit of plot but it's not there yet.), (Still Team Switch Forever!), (in a manner of speaking), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Sex, Chicago Mafia, First Dates, Fuckbuddies, M/M, Misunderstandings, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rimming, Russian Mafia, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Top/Bottom Versatile Castiel/Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:55:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24230170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv
Summary: Dean doesn’t think that recovering from being shot is fun in the first place. He’s a little stir crazy, he feels like he’s losing track of what’s going on around his city, and the fact that he got shot in the first place means that there’s some bad shit going down. Bobby wanting him to escort some Mafia princess around Chicago to demonstrate ‘goodwill’ to her family is just the last straw.Dean’s bad mood has nothing to do with the fact that a certain Bratva didn't show last night.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: South Side Swing [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1734220
Comments: 48
Kudos: 284





	East Englewood

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's been taking the time to read and comment. I had no idea that this AU would take over my brain like this, and it is due to all of your enthusiasm!
> 
> I had this mental conversation while writing this:  
> Me: Alright, boyos, it’s time for some plot!  
> Cas+Dean: Nope, sorry. Porniest thing you’ve ever written, please.  
> Me: ……………Balls.  
> (A tiny smidgen of plot might have snuck past their tomfoolery. Maybe.)
> 
> There is a brief mention of canon-typical violence with minor injury, and an even briefer mention of Sam having a history of drug use.
> 
> \\\Laura, Queen of the Damned// [wearetheluckyones ](http://www.archiveofourown.com/users/wearetheluckyones_Laura/pseuds/wearetheluckyones_Laura) is still working very hard to keep my long sentences under control!

Dean Winchester knew that there was a lot that people would consider fucked-up about his life, but he was pretty sure that that was because they thought the life of the Chicago Outfit’s street boss was a lot more exciting than it normally was.

Yeah, okay, Dean did hit people. Yeah, he’d spent more than one night of his life in jail, and he had a rap sheet. Yeah, he carried a gun almost everywhere. Yeah, sometimes he even shot people with it. If the fucking Mickey Cobras had a problem with guns leaving the Chicagoland area, _yeah_ they could take it up with Bobby and the Outfit, and Dean would be right there to introduce them to his Colt. It was a Hell of a lot bloodier than that smarmy crap that Ketch pulled—but it was also… cleaner in a way. 

It wasn’t like this shit had _rules_ , they weren’t freaking Alexander Hamilton, but it was pretty well understood that once the guns came out in a fight then it stopped being playtime. Dean could cut a guy and shake hands with him at the end of it, get punched in the face and have a drink together the next day. Once bullet casings hit the ground, though, that became serious shit.

Not everyone thought the way they did, though. Some people liked to wave a gun around like it was a second dick. Dean had known they’d take heat from some of the rest of the South when the guns started leaving the South Side for elsewhere. Guns were heat and guns were _power,_ and that was just what it was.

Dean had walked away from the last little sortie a week ago… well, he hadn’t been walking exactly. Yeah, alright, Dean had been leaning on Sammy’s shoulder with a hole through his leg drenching his sock with blood, but they’d stepped away with all of their people, and the M-Cobras had crawled away _without_ all their people. None of those Fuller Park bastards had so much as peeped their pretty heads up about Bobby’s meeting with Gabriel this morning, so yeah, Dean would count that as about a hundred percent a win.

Dean had just gotten the stitches out of his calf, and the bruising was still insane, and it still kind of hurt like a mother. That said, he could walk mostly without limping now as long as he kept the thing wrapped up tightly enough under his jeans.

Okay, sometimes life as the Chicago Outfit’s street boss could be a little exciting.

Today, though. Today was just for Dean; the crisp September kept the garage from being too hot, and the insides of this pretty little powder-blue classic Mustang were smooth under his fingers. He stroked the edges of the wings, and cooed, patting the undercarriage. The first shipments were going out next week, and in return there were some parts coming in on the train on Wednesday that Dean was just _salivating_ to get his hands on. Gabriel and Bobby had shaken hands on it, serious as a heart attack. 

Today was the beginning of a nice clean autumn, and it was _awesome._

Or it had been.

“You want me to… what?” Dean slid himself and the creeper out from under the Mustang and peered at Bobby across the bumper. He couldn’t have heard that right.

Bobby nudged Dean’s good knee with a boot. “You heard me, boy.”

Dean groaned. He only just stopped his oil-streaked hand from pushing through his hair as he looked up at Bobby’s frowning face. “ _Bobby._ ”

Bobby’s frown deepened until, from Dean’s angle, he looked like he was mostly beard. “Weren’t you the one sayin’ you wanted to get back out there?”

Dean let his head flop back against the creeper’s base. “Bobby, I said I wanted to _patrol_ , not…” 

This was the part of his job that was _not_ exciting.

It wasn’t that Dean normally _minded_ taking a visitor from one of the Outfit’s allies around their town. When Bobby was calling on him to do it, it was almost always a woman—he was better at it than Sam, and their Capo were always impressed that Bobby’d gone through the trouble of asking his street boss or his consiglieri to take personal care of them. If they didn’t know that Bobby had originally gotten them to do it by threatening to tell embarrassing childhood stories to the rest of the Outfit, well, what they didn’t know wouldn't hurt them.

Dean drew the line at anyone’s girlfriend or wife or whatever because that had just _not_ gone well in the past—that was Sam’s bailiwick, mostly, he did the fancy thing. For Dean, though, yeah, it was always someone’s daughter, someone’s mom—once, to Dean’s amusement, it’d been Lady Harvelle herself. That’d actually been really fun, they’d gotten along like a house on fire.

Jesus Christ, _no,_ he didn’t sleep with any of them! Dean shuddered. No, it didn’t matter how hot they were. He did not sleep with Mafia girls _or_ guys, everyone knew that, that was just…

Well.

Okay. To be fair. He hadn’t _known_ that about Cas.

The first time.

Every other time, though?

Dean forgot he had oil on his hands when he rubbed his face, then grimaced as he felt the thick streak that had gotten left behind on the side of his nose. Yeah, Cas hadn’t shown up last night, what about it?

Cas always got in contact when he got into town the night before a meeting. Sometimes he texted, and what the fuck was with the emojis? Dean thought he used them just to piss him off. Sometimes he called. Or sometimes he didn’t, sometimes there was just a familiar trench coat hanging up on the rack in Dean’s entryway because Cas was still a sonofabitch who liked to silently _mock him_. Dean had even changed the locks and put a secondary plate on the door just to see if it would keep him out.

(It hadn’t. Cas had finished the Two Towers by now and moved on to Return of the King. Dean hadn’t ever given him his cellphone number, either—the real one, not one of the many burners he used for work. _Goddammit._ )

Except last night… nothing.

So Dean had finally given up and gone to sleep, not even really feeling up to jacking off. Maybe that had been a bad idea, because he’d spent the night with a weird case of blue balls—twitching awake at every little sound. Apparently his body had, in the last six months, developed some _expectations_ for what it meant when the Novak was going to be meeting Bobby the next day.

It wasn’t like they’d ever talked about terms for this… whatever it was. _Next time_ , and the hopeful surprise in Cas’s smile when he’d said it the first time, the bites they left on each other—Dean hadn’t thought there needed to be more of a conversation than that. It’d almost turned into a kind of a… routine? Cas dropped into town, he gave Dean a look that turned his fucking knees to water, Dean grabbed him by that damned tie and shoved him against the nearest flat surface by the folds of his suit jacket, and away they went. Even times when Gabriel sent Castiel over as a representative rather than coming himself, Cas _always_ showed up for Dean.

So when Dean had stepped up to Bobby’s negotiating table this morning, a little grumpy and tired, he’d really thought that, well, Gabriel had left Cas to hold the home front in Brooklyn this time, or something.

Except Castiel Novak was sitting to Gabriel’s right, the same as he always did, fucked-up tie and all. He nodded once at Dean when he came in, looking at him in the same intense way as always—his eyes staying too long on Dean’s face like he was looking for gaps in his soul—then turned back to his brother.

Dean did not like the ugly drop in the back of his stomach at that. He didn’t even like that he was _surprised_. _What the fuck, Winchester_. A lot of things could’ve changed in… what’d it been, now? Like five weeks since the last time? Longer than usual, but it wasn’t like that should’ve made a difference.

Except, clearly, it had.

It wasn’t a big deal. It shouldn’t be. No biggie, they’d had some pretty awesome times. Even talked a little, laughed a little. Cas was a weirdo, but even the whole sex god thing aside, he was pretty cool. Yeah, it was just a regular fuckbuddy thing—new to Dean, sure, he didn’t really do this—but altogether it’d seemed pretty great, and a lot of fun. Dean had just thought, well…

Well, no. He hadn’t been thinking, _that_ was what had been going on. Yeah.

So maybe between his leg throbbing because Dean’d forgotten to take his pills at lunch, and the fact that apparently Castiel Novak had gotten bored of their little thing before Dean had and couldn’t be fucked to let Dean know about it, Dean didn’t _want_ to go out and make nice with some Mafia girl from Pittsburgh, or whatever. 

What Dean _wanted_ was to tune up this pretty Mustang until it gleamed and purred, go out and nurse some bad whiskey, and then find a pretty lady he could fuck without even taking his jeans all the way off. Dean was classy like that, and he didn’t feel like answering questions about his leg tonight.

It was just not gonna be his day to get what he _wanted_.

“You said you wanted to do your job, so shut your piehole and do _your job_ , Dean,” Bobby looked and sounded like he had no sympathy _at all_ for him. “You do this all the time. You’re _good_ at it. You do the pretty and you smile and are a charming shit and you don’t fuck shit up for the rest of the Outfit.”

“You know it, Bobby,” Dean grumbled.

“Right, so I don’t know why your panties are all in a bunch about it _now_.”

“Well, _yeah,_ but… _why?_ ” Dean hadn’t so much as heard a _whisper_ of anyone coming into town who’d need an escort out for the night. There was a good chance part of his whining was because yeah, Bobby knew things, but in situations like this Dean considered it his job to know them _first_. Being stuck in and healing his leg up meant he didn’t have his feelers out the way he should, and this _sucked_.

“Well, hm, let’s see… because I _told you to_ , you idjit!” Bobby snapped. “Look, this’s been goin’ on for months an’ I have had enough.” His uncle rocked forward on his toes and fixed Dean with a stare to shatter glass. “You’re making the Outfit look bad, here, Dean.”

“What?” Dean’s back shot straight and he shoved off the creeper’s side to sit up—too fast, his leg jolted pain up to his knee, but he ignored it. “ _Hey!_ ” Dean had done _nothing_ to deserve that, _nothing!_

“Castiel Novak is Gabriel’s second-in-command, you’re my street boss, and the two of you spend most meetings staring at each other like you’re trying to figure out where you’d best like to stab,” Bobby retorted. “How d’you think that looks to everyone else, huh? How d’you think that reflects on the talks?” He gestured a hand at Dean’s left calf. “What, you think that little tango was an _accident?_ ”

Huh?

“What?” Dean’s jaw sagged. “Wait. Wait, _what?_ You want…” that couldn’t be right. Bobby could not be saying he wanted him to take _Cas_ out around Chicago—

Also, he and Cas didn’t _stare_ at each other!

“So you’re gonna take him out there on our town, you’re gonna show Castiel a good time in our city, an’ you’re gonna be _nice_.” Bobby bared his teeth in something that was only about ten percent smile. “You hearing me so far?”

“Bobby,” Dean started with something like desperation, because not only did Bobby have it _all wrong,_ shit, even as good as Dean was with bullshitting he didn’t even know if he _could_ do this tonight. “Look, me and Cas don’t have a problem—"

Bobby stabbed a finger at him like he was going to put it through Dean’s forehead, and Dean shut up. “Well, then _good,_ ‘cause you and that Angel are gonna be the bestest of friends tonight for every Vice King and Mickey Cobra in all the damned South Side to see,” he growled. “‘Cause you are a _nice_ guy, Dean. And if you two wanna go back to tryin’ to kill each other with your eyeballs you can do it on your own damn time. Capisce?”

“Yeah, yeah, I capisce,” Dean muttered, and even he could hear the poor grace of that statement in his own voice. But really, there wasn’t anything else he _could’ve_ said. Then, under his breath, “ _Sonofabitch._ ”

“Yeah. Uh-huh. I thought you might say that.”

Dean was getting a really bad feeling about this. Bobby’s smile was all teeth, and when he smiled like that he either had a new experiment in the still, or someone was going to suffer. “Yeah…?” he asked, warily, when Bobby stopped there.

“Sam’s expecting a call, you’ll tell him where y’all are meeting, yeah?”

Dean’s mouth fell open. This couldn’t be _happening._ “Bobby, what the _fuck_ , what is he, a—a chaperone?!” he blurted.

Bobby snorted, but he was already turning away when he tossed over his shoulder, “Ain’t a word for ‘really tall guy there to keep you two idjits from killing each other,’ so yeah, sure, ‘chaperone’ works.”

*_*_*_*

The Hilton in the middle of the Chicago Loop was exactly the _opposite_ of the kind of place Dean stayed when he or anyone else from the Outfit went places, but Dean had never exactly claimed to be the height of sophistication. Then again, considering that _Gabriel_ was the last thing from a classy customer, he was a little surprised they weren’t in the Staypineapple.

Now that he thought about it? Cas probably picked the rooms.

Between second and fourth floors, all the way opposite from the lobby, just off a branch point?

Yeah, Cas had _definitely_ picked the rooms.

He answered on the first knock—the lobby had called up when Dean had gotten to the hotel, Dean had smirked maybe just a little bitterly and told them it was ‘Michael Wesson’—before the echoes had cleared. Dean thought he heard the almost-inaudible _tic_ of a gun barrel leaving the door.

“Heya, Cas,” Dean raised a hand and waved. He could be normal about this.

Cas was in his slacks and his button-down, as usual, but he didn’t have a tie on, his shirt wasn’t tucked in, and the top three buttons of his shirt were still open. Dean thought he looked a little naked without his suit jacket on—which was a weird and uncomfortable thought considering how often he’d seen Castiel Novak _actually naked_. He did have a snub little gun in one hand, finger curled around the outside loop of the trigger guard, and angled just inside the door frame so if there were hallway cameras—place like this, there probably were—they wouldn’t catch it.

Cas flicked his eyes to either side, checking the hallway before he focused on Dean. He nodded his head in that way he usually did, unsmiling and without looking away, and stepped out of the doorway to let him in. It was only when they were standing in the foyer and the door had swung closed on its own weight that he rumbled, “Hello, Dean.”

Shit, that voice _still_ gave Dean the shivers. Yeah, everything was all so very fucking normal. Which made that tight little knot in his stomach twist tighter, and Dean kept it off his face. He nodded at the pistol Cas had put up, instead. “Ruger LCP?” Not an elegant lady like Dean’s engraved Colt, just basic black, no fancy slide or custom colors. Tiny, practical little pop gun. It was _very_ Cas, and the fact that he could think that left his throat a little sour. “Long pull on that.”

“No safety,” Cas turned towards the sliding entryway closet and reached just inside, pulling free a pocket holster from where he must have taped it right behind the sliding door. Huh. Clever, in a place like this—the places Dean and his stayed when they went elsewhere, well, no-one would bother looking for a gun because so many _had_ them. Cas cocked his head, curious and thoughtful, as he tucked the holster back into its hiding spot. “Do you have trouble concealing your Colt during the summer? It gets hotter here than I expected.”

Dean heard himself laugh, almost convinced himself it sounded normal. “That’s what I like about you, Cas. Straight to business.” Shit, he really had to stop this.

Castiel frowned. “Dean?”

Dean shook his head. “I guess the Novak told you.” He shrugged, and this time it was smoother. Yeah, ‘cause if Dean couldn’t be professional about this, he _couldn’t_ do his job, and Dean was fucking _good_ at his job, thanks. “Anyway, finish getting dressed. People think we’re pissed off with each other, so we’re supposed to go prove we’re not? Or something. It’s pretty stupid, but I figure—"

“Be quiet, please.”

Okay, he didn’t expect that. Dean’s back snapped more rigid than it already was and he scowled—who the fuck did Castiel Novak think he was to tell Dean to shut up?—but Cas had just stepped towards him, and—

Cas didn’t shove him. Didn’t crowd him against the wall. They’d done all of that, back and forth, and Dean probably would have shoved reflexively back, but at least it would have been _familiar._ He did not at _all_ expect Cas to nudge up against him in the entryway, lean in and up with one hand cupping lightly against the back of Dean’s neck for balance. He did not expect Cas to press their lips together. 

The kiss was quick and plush, the soft scrape of those dry lips just the quietest thing, before Cas pulled back and away. It was the last thing from sexy, and considering the silent treatment last night, he would have expected Cas to _punch_ him before doing anything like this.

Dean’s brilliant response to that was a vague, bewildered, “Huh?”

“Ah,” Castiel said, quietly, and came down off his toes. He stepped back. Abruptly, Dean noticed that he was barefoot. “I’ll get my jacket. Just a moment.” He touched his unbuttoned collar, grimaced at whatever look was on Dean’s face. “Sorry. It’s been… I missed you.”

Dean didn’t expect his stomach to flip _hard_ at that, so hard he almost felt it in his chest, thumping behind his sternum. It didn’t hurt—it left his head in a spin. The ugly weight of last night, of what shouldn’t have even felt like a rejection in the first place, slid off his shoulders.

“Cas, you’re givin’ me whiplash, here,” Dean managed.

Castiel paused, half-turned. His fingers were on the third button of his shirt. He did it up, like on autopilot, watching the movement of his fingers. “I’m sorry,” he said, again, and pressed his knuckles to his eyes. “I’m not… thinking. Our flight was very delayed. We arrived at nearly three in the morning. I’m very tired.” 

What?

Castiel blinked, then, slowly, and his gaze was tracking across Dean’s face—Dean wondered what he was seeing on it. Realization, maybe. Oh, shit. “Dean…” Castiel’s voice was soft and rough and so careful, and it prickled at the back of Dean’s neck. “Were you expecting me last night?”

“Uh…” and Dean could actually answer that, or he could ride it out, and if there was anything that Dean Winchester knew how to do, it was _ride_. Dean shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and smirked, loud as a laugh. “Well, you know,” he drawled, “I hear I’m supposed to take you out and show you a good time, tonight, baby. But I’m not sure you can handle me in the shape you’re in.”

Castiel blinked very slowly, the way he did when Dean made jokes and he didn’t quite understand them. Finally, he asked, “Is that some truly horrible pickup line?” Then he wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think I like being called ‘baby.’”

Yeah, that one surprised maybe _no-one._ “Well, that is what Bobby told me, word for word. ‘Take him out and show him a good time.’” Dean drew an X over his heart with one finger. Castiel squinted suspiciously at the gesture, and Dean couldn’t help but smirk, throwing out one hip in his cockiest asshole pose. “Just so you know, that makes me the guy here.”

Castiel’s head tipped to the side and his whole face puckered up in bemused thought. “Dean, I _know_ you are aware we are both male,” he stated, in that flat tone that suggested he thought Dean had lost all of his marbles.

Well… the world was back to normal, after all. Dean was an idiot, and Cas was just… _Cas,_ and there was a strange sort of relief in that? Dean wondered why he felt like he was trying not to smile. Jesus fucking Christ. “You know… I don’t even know why I try,” Dean sighed, dropping his hand from his hip and straightening back to his normal posture. 

So he did not expect Castiel’s eyes to crinkle up—fast. An undignified snort escaped through Cas’s nose before one of his hands came up to plaster over his mouth. The grin was visible anyway, creasing his face above where it was covered by his fingers. A rough, shaky noise shook in Cas’s throat.

Dean stared. Oh, huh. The overly serious sonofabitch knew how to laugh. Who knew. Also, he kind of looked really _good_ like that, sort of like he didn’t get the chuckles out often enough—

Wait.

“What—are you _laughing_ at me?!” Dean demanded.

“My people skills are rusty, but I’m not a _fool_ , Dean, of _course_ I know what you were insinuating,” Castiel snorted, muffled by his own hand. “Also, Capo Singer did not actually say that.” The hand drifted down, and the little crease between his brows and the tilt of his head was more familiar. “Did he?”

“Yeah, that part he really _did_ , I shit you not, Cas.” Dean insisted, but… okay, it was a little funny. Was he ever going to let Cas know he’d gotten Dean with the clueless act? No. His lips were _not_ trying to twitch. That was not what was happening here. “This is your fault, you know.”

Castiel frowned. “How is it my fault?”

“Your default expression at meetings, man. Your resting bitchface makes Sammy look like Cupid. Everyone thinks you’re about to fuck someone up,” Dean complained. Dean was not going to admit for _anyone_ that his own face during this morning’s meeting might have looked pretty pissed-off, too, but the combination of blue balls and not a lot of sleep _did that._

“Hm.” Castiel considered that, lips pursed. Then Castiel reached out, and with a focus that ricocheted its way down Dean’s spine, fisted his hand in Dean’s collar.

It wasn’t rough. It wasn’t violent. The advance towards him was steady, but slow. Dean could have easily stepped back. He could have batted it away. Even when the fingers landed, brushing lightly just over where his t-shirt collar met skin, he could have said something, anything. Castiel’s palm rested on the middle of his chest, fingertips right in the vulnerable hollow between his collarbones, and Dean didn’t move.

Dean didn’t move, and Castiel’s fingers curled, crumpled cloth in them with slow deliberation, and Dean’s spine tightened right up like Cas was tugging on nerves and not cotton. 

So the fact that Castiel’s tone was as neutral as ever when he said, “I suppose _part_ of that’s true,” well, that shouldn’t have gotten to Dean as much as it did.

Dean was not surprised to find himself pressed against the wall by six feet of eagerness, Castiel’s startlingly pretty blue eyes brightening happily even as he watched—and he did look tired, now that Dean was really looking, skin dull, the dark shadows under his eyes thick as brushstrokes. “Miss me, huh?” Dean chuckled. They weren’t even really touching yet, joined at just the one spot of Cas’s hand twisting his neckline. But there was something about Cas being a little undone, already, the open collar and the open cuffs, no tie. Like Dean had already had his hands on him.

“Yes,” Castiel answered, simply, then nosed in against Dean’s neck. The inhale of his breath was almost as sweet as the warm one he blew out, the slow close of his lips under Dean’s ear and the tingling scrape of that eternal stubble of his as he rubbed his face just inside the collar of Dean’s leather jacket. “You _are_ supposed to show me a good time, I thought…?”

Cas _almost_ stuck that landing this time. _Almost,_ until his voice curvetted up at the very end. 

Dean burst out laughing. He felt the tight curve of Cas smiling against his throat, didn’t need to imagine him looking pleased with himself. “Cas, I am _one hundred percent_ sure that this is not what Bobby meant.” But he got one hand into Cas’s hair, holding him in, snuck his fingertips down the back of Cas’s pants with the other. “You sonofabitch, when’d you learn to joke, huh?”

“ _Hmph_ ,” Cas answered, and it felt as if he were kissing right along Dean’s laughter. “Regardless. I will make it very good for you,” he promised, like Dean didn’t already _know_ he would. The mouth on him strayed midline, Cas tongued just under Dean’s Adam’s apple, and oh _shit_ Dean should not have let him know how much he liked that. “We can be quick?”

Oh, right, like they didn’t both know that Dean was easy as anything for Cas, and tempted _as fuck_. Castiel was greedy in bed, all hands and hot mouth long before they got to any kind of main event, but a lot of the time it was so good they didn’t even need to go there. Sometimes two thick cocks wrapped in the circle of two hands was all the satisfaction either of them needed before they curled up in Dean’s bed. They could do that, just get it out of their systems. They could.

“Don’t want it to be quick,” Dean muttered, leaning his head back against the wall. 

Cas sighed a soft huff of breath against the notch of his collarbone. “I don’t, either.”

And that, Dean thought as he reached between them and started undoing Cas’s button-down again, was sort of that.

The room was narrow and as soulless as Dean had expected, but it sure as Hell was no motel—the bed was a king-sized statement, all crisp white sheets and neatly squared pillows, an arm’s reach from the dresser and TV. They were stumbling onto it even before they had all of their clothes off, and Dean ended up sitting down on it hard. Which was good, because Dean’s bad leg still couldn’t take all of his weight without support, so _that_ would have made getting his jeans off look really stupid. 

He had his jacket, shirt, socks and boots off, Colt and holster and knives set to the side, and his pants most of the way down his hips when he looked up, and just… stared.

He really wasn’t sure why Cas had chosen to take his pants and underwear off before his shirt, but Castiel Novak wearing a white button-down and nothing else was a _picture,_ with his buttons all flipped open and no undershirt underneath. He was delicate muscles and juicy thighs and looked sleeker without his shoulders all on display, with one hand resting on the smooth plane of his stomach, just underneath the little divot of his bellybutton. His fingertips just barely brushed the delicate line of hair leading to the dark tangle of his curls. He probably didn’t mean his fingers to arrow down towards where his cock was plumping up sweetly between his bare thighs, still tucked all the way into his foreskin. _Mmm_. 

“What is it?” Cas asked, blinking, his attention sweeping back up to Dean’s face rather than to where he seemed to have been watching Dean’s arms and shoulders move, tickling down towards where Dean’s black boxers were peeking through the fly of his jeans. He looked down at himself, frowning, as if searching for a ketchup stain. “You’re staring.”

“Of course I’m staring. It’s like you have no idea how _stupidly hot_ you are.” 

Dean’s mouth really needed a zipper on it some days.

“Oh,” Cas answered, pinking at the ears, and one hand fiddled with the button at the end of his open shirt. Then, in that shockingly earnest way he had sometimes, “I think you’re very beautiful, too, Dean.”

Dean swallowed something that felt like it was caught in his throat, then laughed, and pushed his way out of his pants, easing the denim off his bandage. “Well, yeah, of course, I’m fuckin’ _adorable_ ,” and he flashed Castiel a smartass wink.

Ordinarily that would have gotten him an eye roll and probably a sigh, but Castiel’s eyes had gone downwards and he was scowling. “Dean, what happened?” he pointed at the wrap going from Dean’s knee to his ankle.

Cas scowling had happened often enough that Dean wasn’t worried. “Just a pressure bandage.” Dean shrugged. “Took a slug through and through. Stitches are out, I just wear the wrap to remind me not to overdo it. It’s just annoying ‘cause it’s a big muscle.”

To his surprise, Cas stalked forward towards him and kneeled at his feet, cupping a hand behind his knee and carefully touching the little metal clips that kept the wrap on. “Do you want to leave it on?”

“Nah.” Dean reached down for the clips himself and started unrolling the long strip through his fingers. The cold, white light of the hotel room should have been harsh on Castiel’s skin, compared to the warmer, dimmer lamplight of Dean’s bedroom, but it wasn’t—it caught in his thick hair and his summer tan, snagged in the soft lines in his forehead and the corner of his pouty mouth. Cas was so damned _pretty,_ but sure as Hell he was no twink. “You’ve got a couple of scars, too.”

Castiel nodded. His arms had a few, which made sense for a knife fighter, but they’d healed well, white and straight—Dean didn’t beat himself up for not noticing them the first time. There was a deep pucker on his left shoulder that Dean couldn’t see under the button-down, probably once some kind of through-and-through, but the pink, shiny scrape of what had once been an old bullet graze peeked from the soft wings of Cas’s open shirt. Dean reached out, nudged cloth away, got distracted running a fingertip down that smoothness. In fact, he was distracted enough that he felt hands on his, and looked down to find Cas had taken the roll from him and started unwinding it himself. 

“It’s still pretty ugly,” Dean warned.

“It’s just a wound,” Castiel answered with the casual ease of someone who really wasn’t bothered by it, and he pressed a kiss to the rise of Dean’s thigh just over his kneecap. He rolled up the wrap expertly and set it aside. His fingers were light on the ugly mottled bruising that was creeping green and purple down his calf, but he didn’t touch the angry, puckered red line. He just nodded, thoughtfully. “I’ll be careful. It’s not healed yet. But I have a cream you can use on it, if you like.”

Dean blinked, then shook his head, grinning. Shit, the fact that Cas kneeling at his feet was an _awesome sight_ aside—he did not look even the tiniest bit submissive when he did it, either—it was really _nice_ getting naked with someone who didn’t freak out at the sight of something like this. “You know… I got more scars than you do. If you didn’t know I was Outfit, what _did_ you think?” They hadn’t really talked about it, ever—there wasn’t much to be said, since the whole thing was still _fucking embarrassing_ on both their parts—but now Dean was kind of curious.

The pink around Castiel’s ears spread forward, lit his cheekbones, and Dean let himself stare, ‘cause Cas blushing like that was a goddamned freaking _gift_. “I… didn’t know. Perhaps a mechanic? You have wonderful shoulders, and a lot of scars on your hands.” Dean did, and since most of them _were_ from the garage, that wasn’t too bad of a guess. “You were just…” and that was one of those all-explanation little shrugs he gave sometimes. “Honestly, I knew I was being very foolish.”

“Just wanted my fine ass that bad, huh?”

“ _Yes,_ ” and Dean didn’t know if it was the soft word of that or the fact that Cas pressed it into the inside of his bruised leg, just inside his knee. He didn’t have time to think about whether that made him feel smug or flattered, or what it did to that funny, achy twist in his belly, the one that didn’t hurt anymore. ‘Cause Cas’s next breath was warm, openmouthed, right against the curve of Dean’s cock, and he closed his lips gently on it right through the cloth.

It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough—just a tease of heat and wet and force, the faintest flick of tongue. Dean cursed, propped his hands on the mattress, let his head sag back on his shoulders. Yeah, yeah, he could take a hint. Then there was no _hint_ as Cas tongued the slit of his boxers open and slid Dean free without so much as using his hands, and gave Dean a good long lick. Dean shifted and tried to press up into that mouth, but Cas pulled away just before Dean got more than a tantalizing brush of soft, chapped lips.

“Take off your shorts and get on the bed, please,” Cas told him. He didn’t lift his head, but he did rest one hand on Dean’s thigh, thumb digging in gently, but firmly enough that Dean was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to thrust back up again at the same angle.

Except Cas was telling him that without lifting his head the rest of the way, so he was literally breathing the words _against Dean’s cock,_ his bottom lip catching and snagging on the ridge where crown met shaft. This didn’t seem like really good tactics, but what did Dean know? “I dunno,” he gasped. “Kind of liking the view here.”

He sucked in a sharp breath through his nose as Cas licked him—a wet, teasing little flick just under the head of him, firm enough that Dean’s whole cock bobbed with it. “ _Get on the bed,_ Dean.”

Oh, so it was going to be like that, was it?

Dean slid himself up and on top of the crisp, white sheets on this huge bed in one long motion—the mattress was firm under him, which was _good,_ Dean was suspecting someone was gonna need some support tonight—and gave Cas a show of peeling off his black boxers and tossing them to the side. Cas seemed to have forgotten he still had his shirt on when he went to follow Dean onto the bed, but he paused just as he bent to put a hand on the sheets.

Cas squeezed those blue eyes of his shut, and muttered something in Russian that was almost definitely more out of Dean’s vocabulary than his own, so deep it rattled. He straightened away from the bed and ran his fingers through his hair, leaving him even more mussed-up than usual. “I have not unpacked yet, I…”

Dean got it. On any other day he’d have poked fun at Cas for that—seriously, when Dean went anywhere on a trip he knew what the first things were that he unpacked, and it wasn’t his toiletries. But considering that _he_ hadn’t shown up with anything in his pockets today either, that was a pretty damned big glass house he was standing in. 

Dean smirked, and wrapped a hand around his own cock instead, giving himself a nice, slow warm-up stroke. “Yeah? Better do that in a hurry, then.”

Castiel staring and biting his lower lip rather than turning towards his suitcase, like he couldn’t actually decide whether to go looking for the lube and condoms or keep watching Dean, was _really_ fucking flattering. Dean knew which way _he_ wanted Cas to be going, though, so he let out a low little snag of a moan, and rubbed his thumb on that little band under the glans where he knew Cas himself _really_ liked being touched.

Castiel went.

It took Cas a little longer than Dean had expected to turn back around, and by then, his hand was still moving slow and deliberate, but Dean wasn’t just hard, he was hard and a little slick. The look on Cas’s face—the way his hands went tight, white-knuckling around the little bottle of the fancy lube that he liked to use, his mouth sagging open? Yeah, oh, that was more than fucking flattering.

“You like watching me jack off, huh, Cas?” Dean panted, and he arched a little off the bed for effect, just fucking into the tunnel of his hand. “Whadd’ya think, one day maybe I won’t let you lick me, I’ll just have you watch me stripe one out. Maybe get some on your face, how about that? Get my come on those pretty lips.”

Okay, for a second Dean thought he’d let his mouth run away with him _too far_ , because Cas went so completely still. He had one knee and one hand on the mattress with the lube pinned under it, mouth just a little open, and his eyes were so dark there was no blue left to be seen. He was still wearing his shirt, and the folds of it were like a perfect frame for his midline.

Dean didn’t know if he should stop or—or… maybe not. Because Cas’s eyes were fixed back on his, now, and the desperation in them was just fucking _beautiful._

Dean really, really enjoyed wrecking him.

“Dean, you have to stop talking,” he ground out.

“’Cause you like it.” Dean gave himself a long, teasing stroke, rolling his palm up and over and then spiraling it down again all the way to the base.

Castiel’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, again, once more. “ _Yes._ ” 

_Fuck_ he really loved how completely honest Cas was in bed a lot of the time, too. “I dunno, Cas, I bet I could put on a damned good show for you, what d’you think?” Dean crooned, thumbing at the slick beading on the head of his cock, using the pad of his finger to spread it around. Cas was gonna give himself whiplash looking back and forth like that. “Keep it nice and slow?”

Cas’s cock jolted, visibly agreeing with Dean, a sweet little bob up towards his belly. Heh.

“Probably have to tie up your hands, though, you know how you get,” and Castiel’s eyes went so wide and shocked and blue that Dean had to swallow a laugh. “Nah?” Goddamn, this _guy._

“I… I don’t know,” Cas blew out a very long, slow, even breath. It was amazing how if Dean was watching just right he could _see_ Cas hauling himself back together, piece by piece, the way his shoulders came back, hands unclenching. The _pride_ in him was something to see, alright. Dean had been a little wrong, that first time—Cas could be kind of quiet at times, a little drawn too far into his own head, but he sure as Hell wasn’t _timid_.

“Something to think about,” Dean grinned. “You never know, you might even like it,” and yep, that was just that little bit too far, because now Cas’s eyes were narrowing again, chin going up, and his shoulders had rounded out.

Dean wasn’t even going to pretend that that wasn’t exactly what he’d been going for.

“Someone really needs to teach you some manners, Dean.” Cas was on the bed, now, and coming for him—Cas’s already-rough voice was on the ground floor and heading towards the basement.

Uh-huh. Dean stretched out to his full length on the bed and slid his free hand behind his head. His own slick was still tacky between his fingers, and he watched Cas’s eyes follow the gleam of it as he brought it to his mouth, sucked the salt off. “Yeah?” he crooned. “You gonna be the one to do it, Cas?”

Castiel leaned towards him, against him, slid the rest of the way _onto_ him, and Dean shivered at his weight, the hot lines of their cocks side by side, the wet streak Cas was leaving on his groin. He liked girls—Hell, he loved ‘em, their softness and their curves, their delicate throats and _tits._ But there was nothing like a guy on top of him, either, skin as hot as his with that electric rasp of hair against hair as their thighs rubbed. His whole body relaxed under Cas’s familiar hard planes. 

On second thought, Dean wanted _skin_. This shirt had to go. He slid his fingers inside the open front and shoved it off Cas, letting his fingertips dig into the bare line of his hips on the way down.

Oh, yeah, there was nothing like a guy on him—and absolutely nothing like a _fucking hot_ guy watching him blue-eyed and hungry. Hell, he thought each time that it couldn’t get better, that he and Cas would run out and get bored of this, and each time he found himself _really glad_ he could still be wrong about that.

“Dean,” Cas rumbled, dropping the shirt lazily off the side of the bed. “I’m _still_ not sure you have any intentions of behaving.”

“Never said I did,” Dean ran a finger down the back of Cas’s ear, grinning as he shivered. “Like I told you before… you can _try_.”

“That’s not even remotely what you said,” Castiel muttered, but his lips were starting to curve, and no amount of looking away was going to keep Dean from seeing that reluctant smile. He ducked his face under Dean’s chin and nuzzled. “I want to try something different,” he murmured. “Will you let me?”

The slow silk rub of those lips right against his pulse, back and forth, the contrast of the delicate prickle of Cas’s raspy stubble, kind of made Dean want to agree to _anything_ he wanted. 

Still, though, Cas was more likely to announce what he wanted right to the world and leave it up to Dean whether to agree or not (thus far, Dean always had.) He didn’t normally ask for permission. Cocky sonofabitch. So now Dean had to admit he was curious. “Will it hurt?” he asked. Hey, better to get the stop signs up now if it was, Dean wasn’t really into much pain—though considering the way Cas had looked so shocked when Dean had mentioned tying up his hands, he sort of doubted that was it.

Cas’s head jerked up and back like Dean had belted him one. His whole face turned into an adorable expression of offended, confused little owl. The only reason Dean—somehow—managed to keep a straight face was that Cas hadn’t ever _actually_ kicked him out of the bed for his smart mouth, but there was a first time for everything.

“ _No,_ ” he bit out, and Dean wasn’t sure if it was sweet or just ridiculous, ‘cause Jesus, he _knew_ what Cas’s reputation was. “Why would you even ask that? I’ve never wanted to—"

“Aw, c’mon, Cas, there’s hurting and then there’s _hurting_.” Dean reached out to cup the back of Cas’s head, rubbing lightly at his scalp, and this time, he did laughed. “You leave marks on me all the _time,_ what the fuck, you don’t get to make that face. I know _you_ like it a little intense, half the time you’re trying to rush me through prepping you and I practically got you to come when I bit your nipple last time.”

Castiel turned red. (He hadn’t even known he’d like getting his nipples licked, much less get them nipped on until they stood up in little peaks. Dean sometimes really wondered what was up with Cas, and what idiot savants had been responsible for teaching him about sex, because he knew a metric _fuckton_ about how to please someone else but sometimes missed things about _himself_ that Dean would have thought were obvious.) 

And the most unexpected things still made him blush.

“Nonetheless,” Castiel grumbled. “No. That is not the same.”

Dean chuckled, and gave the grumpy, offended Bratva another head scratch. No-one had better _ever_ tell Cas that he was a lot more kissable than scary when he made that face. “Alright…” Dean rubbed his good calf across the inside of Castiel’s. “Okay. So you wanna try something. Tell me.”

Cas pushed slowly off him, dragging off inch by inch, which made Dean’s eyes narrow, but it was just to straighten up to a sit and tuck one leg underneath himself. Dean sprawled back and propped both hands underneath his head. He couldn’t help but grin. Yeah, laughing at Cas right now was probably not gonna get him what he wanted, but he looked so deliberate and _earnest_. Like his spreadsheets were all out of whack and it was up to him to balance them.

He’d really come to enjoy a lot of Cas’s little weirdnesses, and the fact that he’d sit up straight like that and fold his hands even though he was buck naked with his cock hard against his thigh? This was the only guy he knew who could make that look even kind of dignified.

“I want to lie you back on the bed,” Castiel began, solemn as a soldier, “with your knees up to your chest. I’d like you to hold them there. A little spread apart would be best, and in a position that does not strain your leg, of course.”

Oh. “Well… okay.” Sure, why not? Knees to chest was not Dean’s favorite position in the world—he probably hadn’t done that in years. In his case, it was better for show than for go anyway, since he wasn’t that flexible, though he remembered he _could_ make a pretty good show of it. 

Hey, he was game to try, anyway. Huh, _had_ they ever done missionary? Dean didn’t think so. Wait. Really? Wow, how’d they missed that? Well, then, it was probably high time for it. Kind of vanilla for all that Cas was talking like this, but Dean wasn’t disappointed.

“Then I would like to put my tongue inside you, and lick you open until you can’t hold your knees up anymore. Perhaps with a fingertip or two.” Cas blinked, deliberately, curling his fingers lightly around his bent knee. “Would that be acceptable?”

_What?_

Dean couldn’t have heard him right. Had he just said—

Castiel’s diction was always _very, very_ clear.

“ _Hnnnng_ h,” Dean managed from around where he’d just nearly swallowed his own tongue. _You kinky, amazing little sonofabitch._ Dean’s eyes automatically dropped to those long, graceful _fingertips_ that Cas had mentioned, now settled right where Dean couldn’t possibly miss them.

That now-familiar little tilt of Castiel’s head to the side, the curious little purse of his lips, almost _ruined_ Dean right there. “Dean?”

“Uh, I, uh.” Shit, shit, _shit_ , Dean could almost feel his cock drooling on himself, and he definitely felt it jerk, hard as a heartbeat. He didn’t dare reach down to adjust himself, because he did _not_ want to come before Cas had so much laid a hand on him, he did _not._ “Lemme… _yeah_ , that… uh…”

“You could touch yourself during, if you’d like, you know I enjoy that,” Castiel’s eyes were still, and blue, and earnest, and just as deadly serious as always—just like when he’d said _“backing myself on your cock would be no hardship”_ and exploded Dean’s brain for the first time. “But if you are about to orgasm, I would like you to beg me for it.”

Jesus _Christ_.

Well, there went Dean’s brain again.

It took three tries before Dean could get enough spit back into his mouth to actually form real words. “Uh.” Yes, that was his voice. Cas had barely touched him and Dean totally sounded like Cas had already been fucking his throat. “Will you, uh. Let me?”

Castiel considered it. He actually fucking _considered_ it.

His lips curved very, very slightly into the silence, one eyebrow flicked just the slightest hint upwards, and Dean could almost hear him saying with nothing more than the press of his gaze, _“Do you think perhaps that will teach you manners?”_

“Perhaps,” he answered. 

Fuck. _Fuck_.

“Lemme go wash up,” Dean croaked, and bolted for the bathroom.

*_*_*_*

By the time Dean got back out, still a little damp from a land-speed-record wipe-down, his brain had found some of its pieces again and his head wasn’t spinning anymore. His mouth was still dry, though, and fuck, he knew he was red in the face—though not for the same reason. 

Dean had forgotten just how weird it felt to be holding himself folded up like this—hips propped on a pillow, hands gripping behind both thighs to bring them up to his chest, both legs in the air. He fought the crazy urge to wiggle his toes. Christ, he didn’t feel sexy, he felt _exposed._ What the fuck was he doing here, exactly? Hell, before Cas it’d been a long time since he’d even taken it up the ass.

Yeah, being able to go back and forth with Cas was in general pretty awesome. Dean _liked_ to top, of course he did, but it was like him liking both guys and girls—there was just _nothing_ like going the other way now and again. And with him and Cas, well, most times they could just look at each other, someone would reach out to pat or grab or bite, and they both just _knew_ who was going to be getting it. 

Though… the one time they’d tussled for it? That’d been really fun, too.

(No, Cas hadn’t _won_ , that hadn’t been what had happened, there. Dean had just been having an off day. Besides, he’d felt like bottoming, anyway.)

Dean could honestly say he’d never had anything like this—yeah, even before he’d realized the Outfit meant he didn’t get to have relationships. But here they were, and Cas was kneeling on the bed in front of him with one hand resting on Dean’s shin like he’d forgotten what he meant to do with it and looking at him up and down like he couldn’t decide where he wanted to put his mouth first. How _hungry_ he was looking made this _really fucking embarrassing_ position almost okay.

“Thighs alright?” Cas’s palm trailed down the outside slope of one, and Dean almost jumped.

Dean nodded. “Y-yeah.” His voice came out a little tight, and he cleared his throat. 

“Oh… Dean,” Castiel murmured, drawing a callused finger down the back of Dean’s leg from behind his knee all the way to the round of his ass, and Dean fought the urge to squirm. They could both see he wasn’t hard anymore. But Dean sucked in a deep breath as Cas leaned in, leaned towards him, got between his thighs. He closed his eyes, pretended he didn’t feel kind of stupid, and let Cas nuzzle against the soft insides of his legs. He even chuckled a little when Cas licked the ticklish crease where leg met groin, lipped playfully at his balls, just a tease. Okay, that wasn’t so bad. He was still keeping his eyes closed, though.

So he didn’t see it coming when Cas slipped the whole of Dean’s still-soft cock right back into his mouth.

 _“Ah!_ ” Dean’s eyes flew open, that shocked sound spilled out of him and he felt half the muscles in his belly clamp tight in surprise. _Wow,_ okay, that… wow. That was… different. Cas pursed his lips and the way Dean’s skin _moved_ on him when Cas sucked just… _goddamn!_ That did not feel _anything_ like someone playing with him when he was getting soft, that edge of oversensitivity. But it also wasn’t the same sensation as when he was hard. 

Being wrapped in the hot slick of that mouth should have all felt familiar, the glide of Cas’s tongue up his underside. But it wasn’t _tight_ , wasn’t _pressure_. The movement of it was almost easy. Cas’s tongue couldn’t have pressed him easily up against the roof of his mouth that way if he’d been erect; his whole cock couldn’t have nestled in comfortably like this, wouldn’t have glided so effortlessly when Cas sealed his lips around the base and sucked—just a soft drawing pull. Just gently.

 _Oh_. Oh, okay, that was… really nice.

“ _Mmm_ ,” Cas hummed around him, still sucking slow and rhythmic and pulsing, not moving at all because he didn’t even _need_ to, and _fuck_. Well, not being hard wasn’t going to be a problem anymore, and Dean shivered. But Cas just _held_ him in place, held him there all the way down, let him fill and fill and okay, that was definitely pressure now, the ring of his lips, the nudge of his palate. Dean dazedly watched those blue eyes fluttering shut in concentration, Cas’s brow crinkling together in the middle—

Cas swallowed, and if Dean hadn’t already been curled up like a pretzel he’d have shoved his hips right against Cas’s face from how intense that felt. All his breath left him in a high whine that might have been Cas’s name, and only the sharp dig of his own nails into the back of his thighs kept him sane, kept him from doing something stupid and rude like letting go of a leg and grabbing Cas’s hair instead.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t already _known_ Cas liked sucking cock, but normally by the time his nose met Dean’s belly he’d been licking and sucking and stroking awhile, working them both up to it. Having it right off like this was, well, Dean’s hole was fluttering empty and he could hear his own pulse pounding in his ears. Cas held and held and _held_ and Dean was pretty sure _neither_ of them was breathing until Cas’s jaw finally twitched a little and he let Dean slip out out _out_ in a rush, huge and swollen and fully hard now.

This time, the tiny electric _pop_ of coming out of Cas’s throat _,_ the tight glide of lips and tongue all along the length of him from base to tip, curled Dean’s toes into empty air. He would have maybe made this little hotel room echo a little if his voice hadn’t still been stuck somewhere in a whimper in the back of his throat. 

“Holy shit… _Cas_ ,” he managed, but it was just breath and rasp. Dean managed to get his nails out of his thighs, knew there’d be crescents there. His cock twitched and jerked in the air, unable to understand why it wasn’t in hot wetness anymore.

The look of satisfaction that Cas gave him from between his legs and the ruined rumble of his voice made Dean gulp down a downright pitiful noise. “I have wanted to do that for a long time,” he told Dean, as if he were talking about checking out a book from the library.

Holy _crap_ what was up with him today? Cas was normally pretty much the definition of good and giving in bed as it was, and this was…

“Would you like more?”

But sure as Hell Dean wasn’t gonna say no.

Cas started from the outside, working his way in, both of his hands joining Dean’s on his thighs. But he pressed his palms up and down them like a weird sort of massage, thumbs nudging where Dean’s hamstrings were feeling a little bit of a strain. Dean had almost relaxed by the time he got the first lick—not where he was already feeling weirdly empty for all that he hadn’t even gotten _touched_ there yet, but just a little off to the side, just where his butt started curving inwards.

Dean didn’t quite flinch, but the slide of it felt good—just a little tickle, like getting his groin creases kissed, but more concentrated. When Cas went for the other side, he relaxed. He felt Cas smile, the hands on the back of his thighs trailed downwards to cup and spread Dean’s cheeks, and…

Dean couldn’t remember when the last time was that someone had done this for him—Hell, probably not since he’d been a twink _himself,_ but it hadn’t been anything like this. Yeah, if Dean had thought that Cas was going to just shove Dean’s hips up and stick his tongue up Dean’s ass, like he’d had from other guys before, he’d have been sorely disappointed. 

Except no, ‘disappointed’ wasn’t the right term. Dean didn’t know what sort of entitled dimwit could possibly _be_ disappointed. Maybe frustrated, though, because Castiel Novak rimmed like he did most everything else in bed: half deliberate and thoughtful and giving, half a _complete sonofabitch_.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he gasped, as Cas flicked kitten licks in little circles around and around, coy swipes that glanced but never quite hit, and _never_ where he was starting to ache and tremble. 

“Oh, I think you like this.” His tongue just _barely_ teased inwards at his pucker and then was gone, Cas’s mouth pressing slow kisses forward, and if Dean thought that that was going to get him a suck or a blowjob he’d have been all for it—but Cas stopped and tipped his head sideways to nibble a stinging stripe up the midline of Dean’s perineum. Dean could almost feel his prostate throbbing at that hint of pressure through there, but it wasn’t _enough_.

“ _Goddammit,_ Cas!” Dean growled, and Castiel _chuckling,_ looking up at Dean over his cock with his lips pressed against Dean’s taint, was just seriously fucking _insulting_. “You are such a—”

Cas licked him right, one broad, firm stripe midline from tailbone on all the way up, and Dean lost his words. And just in case Dean wasn’t oversensitive enough, Cas puffed a cool breath of air on the wet skin. “What am I?” he murmured.

“Screw you, I don’t know other languages I can cuss you out in,” Dean grumbled, and Cas laughed again. But this time, when he dropped a kiss on Dean’s skin it _was_ just where Dean wanted it, the press of his lips’ softness suddenly startling against the tiniest bit of beard stubble. All of it was rubbing against the midline of his crack, and all of Dean’s muscles jumped at the contrast. 

He thought it might still be just another tease, thought he really might yank and yell if it were, but Cas licked—and licked—and licked, working at his rim in three broad stripes, and _oh God_.

Alright, so apparently playtime was over.

Cas sealed his lips over Dean’s hole and _sucked_ , rubbed the blade of his tongue against his pucker like he’d lick ice cream, back and forth—like he was trying to soften Dean up rather than fuck him with it. Dean tried to relax into it, tried to let him in, he really did, because _goddammit_ he wanted that right now. Then his thumbs had Dean stretched and spread, and he _was_ in, tip of his tongue pointed and firm and slippery in all the right ways.

Yeah, Dean was pretty sure someone heard the noise he made at that all the way out in the hall. He just didn’t _care_.

He was pretty sure he couldn’t come like this. Almost sure. But _Jesus_ the slick dance of Cas’s tongue around and into him, peeking in and out, was like nothing else in the goddamned world. Fuck, Dean was _shaking,_ twitching into every lick and press _._ Just relaxing the death grip he had on one thigh to snake a hand onto his cock—Hell, not even to touch, just to _hold_ —felt like lightning, and that wasn’t right, it wasn’t—it was too much and too little all at the same time.

“ _Cas_ ,” and that was his voice, and it wasn’t, more breath than it was noise, thin and reedy. He let go of his cock and slid a hand into Cas’s hair. Tugged. “C’mon, Cas, get up here. Need you to fuck me.”

It was probably the first time he’d said it like that, and Dean knew his face was hot enough to burn, but _fuck it_. That didn’t make it any less true.

Cas raised his head and looked up Dean’s body to meet his eyes. Dean felt a shiver course down his spine and drip his cock slick. Cas looked so fucking _debauched,_ face red to the neck and mouth swollen, spit-wet to his chin, eyes blown out so dark there was almost no blue to be seen. Holy shit, he looked like he was enjoying this just as much as _Dean_ was. 

“Not yet,” Castiel answered.

Wait, what? What was that supposed to mean, ‘not yet?’

It meant ‘not until he was open enough that Cas’s three fingers could play right over both sides and the midline of his prostate like he was out to strum Dean’s nerves,’ apparently. Cas was sucking hard little kisses around the base of Dean’s dick, dipping every few minutes to take one of Dean’s balls gently onto his tongue and using nothing but the pull of his mouth to tip Dean away from the edge. (He’d never understood why that fancy lube that Cas liked claimed to be unflavored, but he guessed he did now.) Dean was so hard he _ached_ , the pull of it ricocheting from his cock into his groin and tightening up his belly, the jerk and twist of the thighs he wasn’t sure he could hold up for much longer for how much he wanted to _move_.

When Cas spread the fingers he had in Dean and licked _between his fingers,_ his tongue flicking along his overstretched rim, Dean had to bite down on his own wrist. Deliriously, Dean _really, really_ wondered how the Hell Cas knew how to do this kind of thing but didn’t know about his own freaking _nipples_. “ _Cas_ , c’mon, please, _please_.”

 _Yes_ , Dean knew he was begging, the sound of it twice as desperate muffled against the wrist he had pressed to his mouth. He didn’t know if he was begging for Cas’s cock or—fuck—or for another finger, even imagining looking down and seeing four of Cas’s fingers buried in his ass was so goddamned electric. He didn’t know what he wanted, and _no,_ he did not care. The feeling of being left empty as Cas’s long fingers slid out of him, slid and slid and slid, was almost too much, too overwhelming, and Dean’s cock dripped hot onto his own skin.

When Cas carefully put his hands on Dean’s, like a reminder, he had to actually think to relax his fingers and let his legs down, pop his back from where he’d been all curled up for so long. He could feel the ache of it, the tiny stinging points where he’d dug his nails into his own skin, but right now he felt so hot, felt so _good_ , and nothing _hurt_. Dean panted back into being in his own body rather than engulfed by it—but that only made the way Castiel was eyeing him, looking up at him from between his legs, that much more compelling. “C’mere, Cas,” Dean held out his arms, and felt the way a grin curved his lips.

Castiel licked his lips like he was reminding himself of Dean’s taste, and rose up on his knees to tuck his foreskin back and roll on the condom. His eyes were still those dark pools, and Cas was always so intense anyway, but being able to actually _see_ him, watch him kneeling and slicking himself up, _damn_.

Dean was dripping with lube, Cas was breathing through his teeth in tiny, gritty pants as he nudged himself in and _slid._ He still felt huge, though, even with all the prep it still felt so overwhelming, and God, that was _so good._

Dean sucked in air as his body rebelled, shivered and ached. Cas paused into it, holding himself up on his arms, their bodies only touching at legs and hips and where Cas was pushing him open. The burn of it was so _fine,_ trembling along Dean’s nerves. 

He breathed into it, slow in, slow out, and let the stretch heat him up. Yeah, it _always_ felt like just a little too much in the beginning, and Dean _liked_ that. That was his very favorite part of bottoming—the moment it stopped feeling weird and achy and wrong, the moment his body stopped fighting, and just _accepted_.

He didn’t know if Cas could see him relaxing into it on his face or feel it in his body, but Cas was smiling a little out of one corner of his mouth, now, and watching Dean’s face like he’d forgotten how to look away. “May I…?”

Cas always asked, and the familiarity of it made Dean grin a little—still so _polite_ even with his cock up Dean’s ass. It _was_ kind of nice to be able to see him—even though right now Cas looked just about as smug as could be. “Yeah, _yeah_ ,” he agreed. and Dean put one hand on Cas’s arm, the other on his back, and held on tight as Castiel slid the rest of the way in. _Fuck_. Oh, fuck, _yeah_.

They probably couldn’t get as deep like this, but it didn’t matter—now that Cas was in, now that he was moving in little testing motions like he was checking to make sure Dean was okay, it somehow didn’t matter. Oh, for fucking sure Dean was still horny enough to be dizzy with it, and he could already see the streaks of wet he’d left on his own belly, but it didn’t feel like a rush.

Or, at least, not that kind of rush.

And sure as Hell it felt deep _enough_ when Cas bottomed out, and Dean wedged his good leg down against the mattress to shove up into it—really _feeling_ that last little push. Cas’s arms, bracketing him, shook, and he sucked in a breath. “Impatient,” he murmured, but his next rocking pull out was still slow enough that even slick as they were it felt like it took _forever_. 

“Whose fault is _that?_ ” Dean laughed, and let go of Cas’s arm to slide a hand up his shoulder and to the the back of his neck. He saw Cas’s eyes narrowing even before Dean ran a thumb down the curve of his ear, swiping it across the helix just to watch his eyelashes flutter. “C’mon, angel—you _know_ I won’t break.” _You know I want it._

He knew he was asking for it when Cas’s smile disappeared and his eyes narrowed—yep, still hated being called ‘angel’—but since Dean had _no problem_ with that reaction whatsoever, it sure sounded like a win-win to him.

The angle of their bodies _did_ feel different—more intense in some ways, less in others—and with one of his legs halfway out of commission the leverage was odd, but Dean was already _really_ fucking revved up. There was something about this, about Cas’s eyes on him and the way he could _see_ him as Cas moved inside him, confident. He’d kind of thought, if he was going to, that Cas would be sort of stoic, because he sure as Hell was never noisy, but… _fuck_. No. Not at all.

Cas licked his lips when he was doing the fucking, Dean realized, a little hazily. He licked his lower lip, over and over, a little flash of pink tongue, or rested the tip of it on that deep bow in his upper. He’d known Cas moved his whole body into each thrust, but holy _shit_ it was not the same as seeing the way his chest and his abs tensed, nothing like feeling his ass flexing under Dean’s hand when he reached out and grabbed on for dear life.

Castiel slid an arm down and hauled one of Dean’s knees over the crook of his elbow before planting his hands back to the bed, and that just… opened him up wide. Dean couldn’t have honestly given a reason why that small shift felt so different, why it should have felt _any_ different. It occurred to him for just a second, somewhere far away, that he probably shouldn’t have his bad calf thrown up like that, but a glance confirmed that it wasn’t that leg. 

Dean knew this was gonna _wreck_ him if he already couldn’t even remember which leg he’d gotten _shot_ through.

But just that tiniest bit of twist, of rotation, meant that Cas was just sort of _glancing_ at one side of where Dean really wanted him with every thrust. It was good, it was really fucking good, and it was also _torture_. Dean arched his back, tried to see if he could move into it just a little—just a little—but with his leg propped up like that he didn’t have any way to get there at _all_.

“ _Cas_ ,” he groaned, and the sonofabitch turned his face and rubbed his goddamned _stubble_ against the inside of Dean’s calf. Cas was bringing up a hickey just along the the inside of Dean’s knee with teeth and suction when he shifted himself and nailed Dean’s prostate right midline, and _fuck_. Dean’s back tried to arch, but all that did was tighten him up around Cas inside him, and Cas almost _growled_.

Dean held off as long as he could—he really did, because for all that he knew he was desperate and tipping over the edge into crazed and oversensitive it all felt so freaking _good_. And maybe he really could come like this, with Cas watching him like he’d forgotten how to look away, like he was seeing himself fucking the sanity out of Dean. He really thought maybe he could. 

But Dean was just feeling too damned impatient, and when he let go of Cas’s shoulder and stuck a hand between them to take his cock in his hand, even he was a little surprised—distantly, far away—at how wet he was, how fast his hand could slide when he started stroking. Castiel’s eyes left his for the first time to glance down, almost surprised, and his hips stuttered against Dean’s ass.

Yep—dirty talk, ears, blowjobs, seeing Dean touch himself… Dean could practically make a _list_.

By the time Castiel carefully let Dean’s leg back down Dean was almost _too_ sensitive, teetering hard between getting fucked and getting himself off, hand moving firm and certain on his cock. Castiel balanced over him on one elbow and put his hand on Dean’s, and that was almost just enough to throw the balance all by itself, the heavy calluses scraping across and through Dean’s own, their fingers interlacing on his cock. Dean’s shoulders shook as a whimper pulled out of him.

Then Cas tightened his fingers, slowing the drive of Dean’s hand to a stop, and if Dean had had any power in him left to do it he’d have _thrashed_.

“Not… yet, Dean,” Cas panted.

“ _Please!_ ” he wailed, fuck, he wanted, he _wanted_. But he didn’t get it, not for the next few sharp, punching strokes into him, and by the time he did Dean didn’t pretend he was anything more than a mess.

Was he begging? Yeah, he certainly was.

Cas’s hand didn’t release his, didn’t let him go—it _pulled_ , stroked, just what Dean wanted, both of their hands on him. And yeah, he knew that Cas was watching him when he spurted all over his chest, enough that it dribbled down his ribs and pooled along his stomach. Yeah, he knew, and not only did he not care, he drove himself into it, blind to everything but blue eyes gone black as they watched him.

Dean’s hand faltered, lost rhythm, but Cas’s didn’t—kept stroking wetter and wetter between them and _fuck!_ Dean let go of his own cock and reached out and clutched onto Cas’s back with both hands, fingers slipping with sweat and come, and _held_ as he bucked, because he couldn’t not, right now didn’t care how desperate and needy the gesture felt.

He just didn’t _care_ , because Cas was groaning now too, loud and honey-gravel, and watching _Cas_ let go of him and plant both hands on the bed as he started to come apart was just… something else. Watching that mouth drop open wet and red and desperate but his eyes still laser focused on Dean’s own, _Jesus Christ._ Dean hadn’t seen anything that beautiful in his entire life. 

That fucking astounding body strained over him, Cas let out a wordless cry—and the twitch and throb of Cas losing it, finally, that last desperate little grind of his hips in, set off a tiny wave of those deep inner aftershocks. One last thin trickle matted Dean’s treasure trail. He tried to suck in a steady breath and failed, fuck, fuck, _fuck_ that was so intense. 

He could feel Cas still coming—those gorgeous eyes were sliding closed, now, as his hips kept jolting in tiny, involuntary little thrusts despite being as deep as he could go, and he was just sinful, just _amazing_. Dean knew couldn’t get hard again looking at him, he knew that he probably wouldn’t be getting hard again for awhile _,_ but geez, just watching him lose it made him really want to _try_ —

Castiel surged forward, shoving Dean’s hips upwards, and Dean almost choked at the intense last rush of _pressure_ in him. With their heights and the position it didn’t _quite_ work, not quite there, Dean’s back was hitched at a weird angle and he could feel Cas’s back straining against his hands—

But the kiss was everything anyway, just a loose, messy pressed brush of lips and tongue, and Dean dug his fingers in and _held_ as Cas shook over him.

Cas finally collapsed onto him like his strings had been cut, heavy and perfect, his head resting against Dean’s shoulder as he let them both fall back to the mattress. He was panting in soft wet breaths. Dean grunted, but he didn’t shove, and the hands he’d had on Cas’s shoulders skated down, tucked around the heaving lines of Cas’s chest and met in the middle. 

He gripped the tight, shivering muscles of Cas’s back with both hands, held him in, held them together and let them pick up the pieces. Castiel nosed underneath Dean’s ear and sighed, low and slow and shaky.

Cas didn’t pull out. Dean knew he should—they both did—but for a little while, he didn’t.

They stayed glued together, breathing and silent, for long enough that Cas had gone mostly soft, and when he slipped out on his own, Dean grumbled and stirred. Damn. Feeling empty again felt… weird. Cas finally climbed up and sat on the edge of the mattress to take care of the condom, still wordless, moving like his body kind of hurt, and yeah, Dean knew the feeling. 

He moved his own hips carefully, and stretched—his ass felt fine, all that prep and play beforehand had done its job, but the thigh and hip he’d had hooked over Cas’s arm were going to be feeling it later if he didn’t stretch them out.

Maybe he _should_ try some of that yoga shit that Sammy was always going on about.

But Cas was back sooner than he’d thought—he hadn’t stood up or left, just swung his legs back over and plopped back down, _entirely_ too close. It would have been stupid to call the look that Castiel was giving him _innocent_ , but there was something bright about it. Happy. He nestled his chin against Dean’s shoulder, and Dean found himself putting his fingers into that dark hair. He scritched at Cas’s scalp, just a little, and the sigh and the flutter of dark eyelashes that got him was _huge._ “Dean?”

“Yeah?” he murmured.

“I like it when you beg,” Castiel announced. His voice was rough even for him, burnt-out and gorgeous, and he sounded more than a little dazed. “ _Very_ much.”

“Yeah. Kinda noticed that,” Dean muttered, and he was probably blushing, but what the Hell, Cas’d seen it all and wasn’t even looking now anyway. He curled a hand around the back of Cas’s neck, nestling him in against where he was breathing against Dean’s neck. “Jesus, _Cas_.”

“Mm?” Cas nuzzled closer, crawling back halfway on top of Dean, and Dean was pretty sure this was the sleepiest and _cuddliest_ he’d ever seen him. But they were both sweaty and even though Cas actually smelled pretty good—like musk and guy and really good sex, like _himself_ —the slide of sweat and come between them felt kind of gross now.

Dean nudged him with a shoulder, hard enough that Cas grumbled and rolled completely off him, pawing out for a pillow and grabbing it to press his face against it. Yeah, he always went facedown and pillow-huggy like that when he was worn out—though Dean wasn’t flattering himself that it was just _him_ this time, since Cas had gotten off a flying death trap at three in the morning and _then_ had to make it into the city afterwards.

And then had sucked, licked and fucked Dean out of his last brain cells _anyway_ , so there was that. If this was what he got when Cas was sleep-deprived, Hell, Dean was gonna sabotage the damned schedule _himself_ next time.

“Who spiked your Wheaties with lightning today, huh?” Dean reached out and pushed some of that spiky, messy hair off Cas’s forehead. He chuckled when Cas’s forehead wrinkled, and he dipped his thumb into the crease that had appeared between Cas’s eyebrows. It was hard to tell how old Cas was, and it’d probably still be hard to tell in ten years, but with his eyes closed and a confused, sleepy look, he looked so much younger.

Dean had his mouth already open to explain Wheaties when Cas’s eyes came open in little slits, but he wasn’t focusing. “I told you,” he mumbled. “I missed you. Stop making me repeat myself.” He pressed his face back into his pillow, and sighed, muffled into it—that just-too-soft, slightly heartbreaking way he had of doing it sometimes, like there was something deeper in him that didn’t quite know how to come out. Then the back of his neck tensed and his eyes barely cracked open again, dazedly. “Oh. I shouldn’t…”

Dean wasn’t sure what Cas was talking about, but it honestly didn’t matter. “S’okay, Cas,” Dean murmured into his temple. “I missed you, too.” He’d probably have been embarrassed to admit it, but Cas did not look as if he was going to remember _jack_ right now, vulnerable and sleepy as he was. “You just rest a bit.”

“Mm,” Cas murmured, and promptly fell asleep.

Dean chuckled and shook his head, looking around for his phone as he carefully tried to start detaching himself the rest of the way from the napping Bratva curled up like a pillow octopus in the middle of the bed. But when Cas’s forehead wrinkled again and he started hunching his shoulders and frowning kind of pathetically, he sighed.

Dean rolled his eyes and fumbled behind him for his phone, then wormed back over those last few centimeters of space, pushing Cas’s arm back towards him and settling himself against that broad flank. Castiel heaved out a long breath and the creases settled out of his forehead when Dean kissed the angle of his shoulder. It took a little bit of wiggling around to get comfortable, but he finally ended up on his side and leaning on Cas, head resting on the crook of one elbow, one arm resting on Cas’s shoulder blade with his phone propped in his fingers. Even Dean shifting around to make sure his hip didn’t get pins and needles and that his bad leg was in a good position didn’t wake Cas up. 

Cas’s eyelids were a dark fan across his cheekbones and that indecent mouth of his was soft and pouting. He didn’t snore, and his breathing was shallow and easy and whiffling. The slow roll of fondness in Dean’s belly wasn’t really a surprise.

So maybe Dean watched the guy sleep for just a little. Just a little bit, while he was getting a video queued up.

It was probably an hour or so before Castiel stirred again, his shoulders and back rolling and slipping under Dean’s outstretched arm. Dean glancing down from an episode of Dr. Sexy, MD, and caught the inelegant stretch of Cas yawning hugely. Good timing, since he’d meant to figure out dinner plans… he glanced at his phone. Yeah, awhile ago, now, and he wasn’t convinced the sounds his stomach were making weren’t what had woken Cas up. He extracted himself from the bed—Cas grumbled, but didn’t try to keep him from going—and took care of his bladder, swiping at the little bit of come still flaking on his stomach.

When he stepped back out, though, Cas had closed his eyes again, back on his stomach.

“Hey, Cas,” he whispered, sitting on the side of the bed; it dipped under his weight, and when Dean reached out to carefully rub the back of his shoulder, Castiel shifted. “You wanna get a burger?”

Castiel raised his head a few inches and looked at him, sleepily. Half his hair was flattened, but his eyes were actually focusing this time. “Yes. I’m hungry,” he mused, before he plopped his face right back into the pillow. “We could order one from room service.”

What? No way. Dean prodded him in the ribs and while that didn’t get him a flinch—dammit—he got a one-eyed glare. “No, man, _come on_ , if we gotta be in downtown then you gotta at least have a good burger. A real one. It’s the only thing that the downtown is _good for_.”

“Chicago has a very nice downtown,” Castiel informed him—like Dean didn’t _live here._ “Also, it’s a burger, Dean. Nearly by definition, it’s both real and good.”

“Well, I mean…” okay, that was sort of hard to argue with. 

“Are you pouting?” Castiel peered at him, then heaved out a hugely exasperated breath and put his forehead back down. “You’re very tiring,” he muttered. “I’m _tired_.”

Alright, big guns it was. Dean dropped on top of him, plastering himself his full length and weight across that long back, slotting his hips against the rise of Cas’s ass. Castiel didn’t quite oof, but he did grunt, and his back bunched under Dean. Dean grinned and rubbed his chest and belly across the heavy roll of Cas’s shoulders and spine. “I can’t believe you want to order in. C’mon, buddy, that’s not a burger, that’s a hotel ground beef sandwich.”

“You are being ridiculous,” Castiel mumbled, and the only reason it was audible even through the pillow was that Dean was lying on top of him, and his voice was just that _deep_. “Why do you have this much energy? I will smite you.”

Smite? _Jesus, Cas_. He was sort of odd about religious stuff, sometimes, but that was weird with a capital _Weird._ “Who even uses that as a threat?” Dean nuzzled into the back of his neck. When that got him no reaction other than a grunt, he added in some teeth. “C’mon, Cas, burgers. Best damned burgers you’ll ever put in that pretty mouth. Up an’ at ‘em.”

When even _that_ didn’t made the lazy Bratva stretched out over the hotel bed lift up his messy head, Dean leaned over and blew a puff of air against the back of Cas’s ear.

That got him a twist of tension down Cas’s back, the peek of narrowed eyes over Castiel’s shoulder. “ _Dean_ ,” he warned.

It was the only warning he was going to get. Dean knew this.

Dean licked him anyway.

Dean knew he was strong, and he knew he was good in a fight, and he had the leverage, this time. He shoved into the motion and the twist of Castiel moving under him because that was just reflex, didn’t quite manage to pin him down before Cas got his knees under him. Dean almost managed to get his forearms up to block the hold, almost twisted enough to get himself out of it. He wedged his good leg over Cas’s calves, arm at his shoulder and almost got it around his neck—

But the bar of Cas’s arm thrust across his shoulders and _down_ , followed by the flow of Cas’s body from abs on up, throwing Dean so hard he bounced against the mattress. All of a sudden _Dean_ was on his belly, and he wasn’t entirely sure how he'd gotten there other than that it had involved the use of both arms, a knee, and a motion with Cas’s hip that probably shouldn’t have been legal. He had one arm pulled behind his back, and about six feet of annoyed, naked guy sitting on his ass and thighs. Cas even had one hand pressed against the back of Dean’s neck, pinning him at two points.

Holy shit. Okay.

So maybe getting flipped like that by Castiel Novak was a goddamned religious experience. Huh.

Dean spat out pillow and turned his head. And smirked.

And maybe he was kind of glad he was on his belly, now, too. Cas already knew he could turn Dean into a puddle with his hands and mouth and dick. Dean was never, ever letting Cas know how hot it was that this little nerdy guy could fucking _manhandle_ him down like that.

Castiel glared at him and put a little bit more pressure on the hand behind Dean’s neck, the heel of it shoving down between his shoulder blades. “You are _very_ annoying,” Castiel announced—probably to the ceiling.

Dean grinned up at him. “Yeah, but you’re not trying to eat the pillow anymore.” He reached back and patted the side of one of Cas’s thighs. “See, look, you’re vertical. Good burgers.”

Then he remembered.

Dean sighed, and dropped his forehead to the pillow.

“What?” Now Castiel sounded genuinely irritated as he climbed off Dean’s thighs. “You can’t make me get up and then go back to sleep.”

Dean didn’t lift his face as he flapped a hand vaguely in the direction of the bedside table.

“No,” he grunted. “But I gotta call Sam.”

*_*_*_*

Castiel disappeared into the hotel shower, still grumbling something under his breath that might have been in Russian. He was still completely naked as he strode across the little room, and, uh, Dean hadn’t actually realized he’d dug his nails in that hard, because delicate pink stripes were rising against the crest of Cas’s shoulders, radiating in to streaks between his shoulder blades, unmistakable. _Oh._ Dean licked his lips.

Yeah, watching the shift of that ass with every step, Dean _severely, severely_ regretted the fact that he actually had to have a discussion with Sam right this second. 

It wasn’t that Dean had an especial thing for shower sex. A slick stroke and rub was fine, a bit of grinding with soap between, maybe, he liked that slip and slide a lot! But he’d been jumping between beds for years, and getting into the shower with someone after could give them _ideas_ if he did it at their place. The last time he’d done anything like that on the regular was, well… yeah, and Lisa had been a long time ago.

Besides, the actual sex part of shower sex itself was… okay? It wasn’t bad. It generally wasn’t great, either, though. Bath products were _not_ an appropriate substitute for lube (Dean had done a lot of stupid things in his twenties) and lube itself always washed off before it should. Someone was always getting hit in the face with spray, and even with a girl sometimes things were just not slippery in the right way (ask Dean’s right knee about this one.) Dean’s body had been through a lot, and wet tile was harder on the knees and the balance than flooring. Besides, shampoo in the eyes and soap in the mouth? Not sexy.

But he’d gotten to like rinsing off with Cas, even if they weren’t always up for doing more than just washing. Hot, grumpy guy with a hickey on the rise of that perfect, perfect hip, blinking sleepy blue eyes at Dean under hair flattened by water? Strong hands rubbing into the sore muscles of Dean’s back, a slow, deliberate roll of thumbs slick with soap just to either side of his spine? Big hands skimming around Dean’s waist before joining in front, stroking away streaks of come with a chin resting firmly on his shoulder?

Yeah, a fucking _miracle,_ that was what that was.

But, no, Dean didn’t get any of that tonight, because all of a sudden, right smack in the middle of Dean’s thirties, Bobby Singer thought he needed a _babysitter_.

Dean scratched idly at the last bit of come drying on his belly, and stretched out once, popping his back as the number rang.

“I knew you were gonna cop out,” Sam grumbled into the phone, yawning loudly. “I told Victor you would, and he said—”

“What? _Bitch._ I’m not,” Dean announced, not sure if he should be triumphant or sour about this, and somehow ending up halfway between. “So you better get your big boy pants on. We’re going out.”

“Really. Uh-huh. And where exactly are we going? Because if you’re planning to take Castiel Novak to Harold’s Chicken Shack, Bobby’s going to _end you._ ”

“Shut up, their wings are fucking _amazing_ ,” Dean retorted. They really were, too—the batter had all these tiny, crunchy blisters that just _shattered_ at the first bite, and just thinking about lemon pepper and vinegary sauce made his mouth water. Geez, he really had worked up an appetite. “They’re a Chicago institution, Sammy!”

“Yeah, and the 87th Street location is also in a strip mall about two minutes from _your door_ , so if you think you’re going to take Gabriel Novak’s brother to go grab takeout wings in your pajamas…” Dean could almost see Sam pinching his nose. 

Dean grinned. It was just _fun_ being a big brother sometimes. “You think he plays Galaga?” he mused. “I think I’ve still got the high score on that machine.”

“Again. Ending you. Not kidding, Dean.”

Looking down at his own nakedness and the fact that he was currently in a hotel in the Loop, some thirty minutes from Chatham, Dean managed to swallow down a retort that yeah, neither the pajamas _nor_ the location were going to be an issue.

“Well, joke’s on you, Sammy. See you at Au Cheval, in maybe…” Dean peered at the closed bathroom door, and grumbled at the thought of parking, “…I dunno, an hour?” They’d get there kind of late, but they’d miss the worst of the dinner rush. Besides, it was Wednesday, and Benny worked Wednesdays—he’d sneak them places at the end of the bar even though there probably wouldn’t be any booths. That was where Dean liked to sit anyway, peering over the counter and hearing everything sizzle. That was where the _magic_ happened.

The silence on the other end of the phone line lasted so long that Dean raised it away from his face to check that the call hadn’t dropped.

“What?” Dean demanded.

“You want to… okay, you’re going to have to run that by me again, Dean.” If anything, now Sammy sounded _subdued_.

“Are you being a bitch again? You’re being a bitch.” Dean pushed himself into sitting up—actually, his back didn’t feel all that bad—but he could feel himself scowling. “Jesus, Samantha, I don’t know when you turned into such an old man, it’s only, what, nine thirty—”

“That’s not what I’m saying!” Sam protested. “You want to take Castiel Novak to _Cheval_?”

“Au Cheval, yeah.” Dean pinched the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he started picking up the trail of clothes they’d left from the doorway to the bed. “What’s your problem with that, now?!” It _wasn’t_ Harold’s Chicken Shack. It was the exact opposite of Harold’s Chicken Shack: it was ridiculous and overpriced and packed with tourists at all hours of the day and night. Dean hated hipsters with a passion and the West Loop was hipster central.

“That’s not—it’s not a _problem,_ Dean, it’s just… you’re taking Castiel Novak to what is probably your favorite restaurant in the _whole world?_ ” Sam demanded, incredulously. “The one you took me to when I passed the Bar? The one where you’ve threatened—excuse me, _offered_ to marry the hostess about thirty times now?”

“What’s wrong with that? Their burgers are fucking _awesome_ , man, they could sweeten up anyone.” That was an understatement. Dean loved those burgers with an insanity that bordered on desperation. He was willing to dare _downtown_ and craft beer and _hipsters_ for them. “And Peggy’s cute.”

Sam snorted, loudly. “Peggy’s sixty if she’s a day.”

“So?” Dean never had trouble finding both his socks, but for some reason finding his underwear wasn’t always that easy. How it’d gotten kicked _underneath_ the tucked topsheet that they’d mussed up to Hell and back he wasn’t sure. “She’s got great tattoos.”

“And she’s married to Leanne.”

Yeah, yeah. “Get to the point, Samsquatch.” He scooped up Cas’s pants and wandered over to drape them over the back of the desk chair, nudging over the black wingtips that were sitting underneath it with rolled black socks tucked into them. 

“Alright, man,” Sammy continued, and had Dean missed something? “I’m just saying.”

The shower shut off. Cas’s shirt was a loss unless he wanted to iron it, and Dean didn’t do irons, so he left that one in a pile on the bed and finished off a bottle of water with three noisy swallows. “What _are_ you saying, Samsquatch?” he answered, laughing. “Because I’m not hearing it, you’re gonna have to spell it out for me.”

“Just, y’know. That’s your favorite place? I know Benny’s a good friend of yours, but, well, if anything happens…” that was definitely Sam’s earnest voice. Very earnest. “I mean, I don’t think they’d _ban_ you, but… you know?”

What? This was getting weirder than usual. Dean’s smile dropped. “Sammy… do we need to talk?” Dean leaned a shoulder against a wall to brace himself. He was starting to get honestly concerned. Everyone knew how Dean felt about drugs. Especially Sammy. Because Sammy was the _reason_ Dean felt the way he did about drugs. He was clean _now,_ but that first year of law school had really fucked him up. 

“What?” and the genuine bewilderment in Sam’s voice did a lot to settle away the chill down the back of Dean’s neck. “Look, Dean, I… really don’t know what’s going on and why you and Castiel are always glaring at each other,” Sam paused like Dean was going to magically fill in some kind of blank in the middle there, “But everyone has noticed. Everyone. _Garth_ has noticed.”

“Garth?” Dean scoffed. “Garth wouldn’t notice if you came to a meeting with your hair dyed baby blue.” He paused. “Garth _didn’t_ notice when you came in wearing a rainbow t-shirt.” Because Sammy didn’t fly that flag personally but he was still a good little brother and a good friend to Charlie.

“Exactly _.”_ Sam said that like it should prove some kind of a point. “He asked if you two had a… what was it he called it, a _grudge_.”

“Why would we have a grudge?” Dean thought that was a pretty important question. “Look, business is business, Sammy. I back Bobby and Cas backs Gabriel, and right now the only thing Gabriel and Bobby disagree on is how much product goes where and how hard to punch Ketch in the face.”

He didn’t even need to see Sam’s face to know the one he was making. “ _I_ don’t know, Dean, why don’t you tell me?! You always seem like you’re on the verge of fighting, and I don’t want you to deck him in a restaurant!”

Oh. Yeah, well. Not… fighting, exactly, no. If only Sam knew. 

Except Dean really had no intention of letting Sam know. So there was that.

“We didn’t have a fight,” Dean told his little brother, curtly. “There isn’t any secret grudge. We get along just _fine_. And I’m pretty sure Bobby, in his infinite wisdom or whatever, thinks it’s your job to keep me from decking him.” Dean huffed an irritated grunt. “You gonna come along and get some awesome burgers or not? ‘Cause Bobby will hang you from the flagpole by your hair, see if he won’t.”

Castiel stepped out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a white towel wrapped around his waist and held in place with one hand. His hair was still dripping down his neck and shoulders, and he cocked his head in that inquisitive little pouty look that Dean sorta loved. He mouthed, “ _hang from the flagpole by your hair?_ ” and squinted at Dean’s phone like he could see Sam right through it.

Dean watched greedily as gleaming water trickled down Cas’s temple, curved across the smooth, incredibly pure arch of his cheek and his jaw—no stubble now, he must have just shaved. Dean didn’t think he’d ever seen him that cleanly shaved before, and _shit,_ that was a good look on him. Dean hadn’t left any hickeys on his neck this time, but that just might have to change, now. He might also have to feel what it’d be like if Cas rubbed that newly-shaved face on him.

Dean was suddenly a lot less interested in anything Sam might or might not say.

“Yeah, Dean, alright, _okay_ ,” his little brother sighed, but if he said anything else after that, Dean had already hung up.

*_*_*_*

Dean really didn’t normally go for the fancy burgers of his dreams. He didn’t normally _need_ them, for one. Top Notch Burgers down by Oak Lawn was normally good enough for a treat, half a pound of juiciness covered with toppings, and it meant that Dean didn’t have to go into the Loop, much less anywhere near Restaurant Row.

But the expression on Cas’s face as he chewed and swallowed his first messy, salty bite was one that Dean had only ever seen on the guy in bed, so, yeah. 

“Eh? Ehhh?” Dean jostled him with one shoulder, then chomped triumphantly on a french fry.

“Don’t be smug,” Castiel grumbled, but he bent his head to lick salt and egg yolk and garlic dijon from where it was dripping off the side of his fingers, because that was just how a sane person with an appreciation for the good things in life did these things. 

Dean, carefully, did _not_ watch the pink sweep of his tongue, the way Cas had his head bowed, the way his cheek looked so smooth but his dark, messy hair was still just how Dean’s fingers had left it—

“You’re asking for a miracle there, Castiel,” Sam, on Dean’s other side, wasn’t watching them as warily anymore as he had when he’d met them in front of Au Cheval. When they’d arrived together in the Impala, he’d sure looked at both of them like he thought they might have pinkeye. Either that or he was trying to mimic Castiel’s favorite glare, and failing (and there was _no_ call for any of that, Samuel, seriously, Dean was not gonna start something in the West Loop even if he hated the place!) 

Sam’s calm right now might have been because he was concentrating on his salad, though. Because Samuel Winchester sat down at the best burger place in Chicagoland and ordered a salad.

Dean loved the kid, he honestly did, but there was something seriously wrong with him. 

“Mm.” Castiel chewed and swallowed with a look of intense concentration, and sighed again. This time, he lipped at the drippings on his wrist.

Benny wandered over, grinning, and leaned his forearms over the edge of the counter—Dean jerked out of his reverie at watching Cas’s lips move over his own pulse. “You look like you ain’t ever had a proper burger before, brother,” he observed, grinning. “You a friend of Dean and Sam, here?”

Dean didn’t have the time to answer before Sam did. “Benny, this is Castiel—he’s from out of town.”

“You do _excellent_ work,” Castiel told Benny, serious as a man handing over his firstborn. _Shit,_ that was cute, not that Dean would ever tell him. “I would shake your hand, but.” He looked at his spit-wet, messy fingers.

Benny laughed, loud enough that it boomed. “Well, then!” he leaned a little closer, and flicked a fingertip in Dean’s direction. “Lemme tell you a secret, then, Castiel. I’m gonna get you a rootbeer on the house… but you see if you can maybe get Dean to part with some of his heart attack on a tray over there. You put that on your burger, an’ tell me how you like it with that.”

“Hey!” Dean complained, wrapping an arm protectively around his full rasher of thick-cut, glazed bacon ( _no_ Dean wasn’t just gonna order the one little measly piece, why would he do that?) Benny always double caramelized it, just for him, so the glaze on it was crackling and crisp on top of the insane juiciness. Dean glared at Benny, but Benny, well, that asshole just laughed, and wandered off to start cracking eggs into tiny individual pans, sprinkling them with chopped chives.

Cas didn’t give him puppy eyes—Dean wasn’t sure Castiel knew how to give puppy eyes, so at least Dean had that kind of protection, at least—but after a moment of Castiel just _staring_ at him ocean-eyed, Dean grudgingly prodded the plate in his direction.

Cas knew how to treat a burger right, though, there was that, at least. He folded up the finger-thick strip of bacon and gently slipped it under the fried egg, and the look on Cas’s face when he took a surprisingly delicate bite was something Dean hadn’t seen short of watching the guy _orgasm_. Castiel put the burger back down slowly and licked his fingers again. He even _sighed,_ long and shaky, and both his shoulders dipped and drooped. “This is _wonderful._ Thank you.”

Okay, that was seriously fucking adorable. Dean didn’t even try to hide how wide he was grinning. _See, Sammy, eh? Good burger’ll sweeten up even grumpypants over here._ He glanced at Sam behind Castiel’s shoulder. Sam rolled his eyes.

“Dean, you really can’t eat all of that. That’s really not good for you,” Sam announced, and _yeah_ there was something cracked in Samuel Winchester’s brain, that he would order a salad at the best burger place in the continental United States, and then try to talk about the _nutritional deficit_ of burgers and bacon again (yes, that was a direct quote.)

“Oh, screw you, Sammykins,” Dean announced, maybe a little too loudly, and shoved half a chunk of bacon into his mouth. Benny, behind the counter, narrowed his eyes at Dean. Dean grinned a little sheepishly and waved him off, actually closing his mouth to keep chewing.

“I realize they’re not… healthy. But I haven’t had anything like this in a very long time,” Castiel admitted, turning the perfectly dressed, medium-cooked double cheeseburger with fried egg, sliced pickles and now a single perfect piece of bacon, between his fingers like he was admiring it from all angles. As he _should._ “It’s… decadent.”

Dean lowered the rest of his piece of bacon and stared at him in horror. “Wait, _why_ haven’t you had burgers in a long time?”

Castiel actually smiled at that, though—the real kind, all through the corners of his eyes and a wrinkle of his nose. “Oh, no. No, I have burgers all the time.” Oh, a man after Dean’s own heart, then. Good to know. This was gonna make visits a lot easier, hey. “Just… not this good. There was a place, when I was in college—Minetta. But I don’t have much reason to be in Greenwich Village anymore.”

Dean could understand that, he wasn’t even sure these awesome burgers were enough reason to come down to the West Loop on the regular. But that wasn’t what his mind stuck on. “You went to _college_?” he blurted.

It wasn’t that he didn’t think Cas was smart, the guy talked like he ate the dictionary for breakfast. But how the Hell did anyone make it through college and not understand a single reference ever? Except Dean really couldn’t ask that in front of Sam, and he pinched his lips shut on the question.

Castiel blinked, slowly, and his eyes narrowed a little. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Oh, hey. No offense, man, no reason.” Dean shrugged. “I didn’t.” It wasn’t like Bobby hadn’t offered, but at the time, Hell. He’d just wanted to get to _work_ , threw himself into it with his whole body and both fists. He’d wanted to start paying Bobby back for everything, not waste any more of his money.

Sam going to school, well, there was a point there. Dean? Not so much.

“Bobby Singer has made it clear he considers you invaluable,” Castiel answered, and the steady seriousness of that made it sound like more than he was saying. But after a moment where something was just still and soft, he took a small bite of his pickle slice. “Both of you.”

Dean blinked at how Cas was looking at him, but he just shrugged once. “Yeah, well. Guess you’re prob’ly different, but for what I do, all you need’s a GED and a can-do attitude, right? Don’t need a fancy degree.” He grinned, hugely, raising his head—Sammy had a strange look on his face. “Sam, though, he’s got that Northwestern degree all framed. With all the hot water he’s hauled us out of, Bobby says it’s the best money he ever spent on a piece of paper.”

Castiel didn’t answer that, though Dean supposed that it didn’t need an answer, did it. Dean focused back on his truly _awesome_ burger. Man, if they ever opened up a branch in the South Side Dean was gonna be there _every day_.

“Castiel, what did _you_ take in school?” Sam, though, ever the lover of everything educational, brightened up, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the bar.

“Oh… Accounting,” Castiel answered, calmly. “I’m a licensed CPA.”

Dean’s mouth fell open, distracted, and a piece of bun almost rolled its way back out. What? No. No way. _What?_

“Ewww, _Dean._ ”

He was pretty damned sure he’d never told _Cas_ what he’d thought the first time they’d met, and Dean closed his mouth, chewed and swallowed his ‘wait, _seriously?_ ’ along with the very big bite of his burger. Then took another bite, just for good measure, to keep himself from blurting out something especially stupid. He stood by his statement that Castiel was the fucking hottest accountant he’d ever seen, and that was before he’d even known he _actually was_ one.

Sam, the lawyer nerd, did not think anything was strange about Castiel’s announcement, though. “Oh, that must’ve been really useful!” he laughed. “Did you take a Master’s degree…? Oh, I’m jealous. I mean, I handle a lot of the money now but, you know, it’s just… mostly seminars and online courses and OJT on my part.” He wrinkled his nose. “I hate receipts.”

“Everyone does,” Cas agreed, solemn like receipts were serious business. “I was glad when Kevin took over the legal side. I’m not qualified. Also, he’s less likely to offend clients than I am.”

Aww, cute. They were _bonding_. 

Dean took a long swig of his beer to wash down that heavenly bite, and reached for the cone of French fries again. His hand brushed Cas’s, outstretched for the same, and they both froze. _Both_ of them—in the dim light, Cas’s eyes sparked blue out of the corner of Dean’s vision, Dean’s own gaze fixed on where their fingers overlapped, tucked clumsily through each other.

Okay. Really? This was ridiculous. This was fucking _absurd_.

Dean raised both of his eyebrows in challenge, and Cas squinted at him. Dean didn’t know why that made him want to laugh again, but it did, and he finally rolled his eyes, gesturing towards the cone with an exasperated chuckle. “Guests first.”

“Thank you,” Castiel answered, primly, and took a fry before looking around—probably for ketchup, and Hell yeah, Dean respected that he’d been eating his burger without, that was just how you _respected_ a good burger. For that, Dean nudged the little metal container of Au Cheval’s homemade aioli towards him. Cas only eyed it suspiciously for a moment before dunking the fry into the creamy sauce and bringing it to his lips, taking a neat, prim little bite.

Castiel blinked, just once. 

His throaty little moan almost dropped Dean right out of his chair. 

_What the fuck, Cas!_

“Oh.” To be fair, at least Castiel looked genuinely embarrassed, this time—one hand up with his fingertips covering his mouth, both eyes squinched as he chewed. “Excuse me. It’s… that is _very_ good.”

“Yeah, they’re famous for their aioli, it’s what’s on their burgers, too.” Sam just looked over, and chuckled, rolling his eyes. “Hey, at least you _know_ when you’re making porn noises over food,” he added, laughing and reaching over across Dean with his ridiculously long arms to steal one French fry of his own. 

Dean smirked and leaned back in his stool, picking up his beer to clear the fact that his whole body had gone _desert dry_ at Cas’s familiar little rumble. Sometimes Sam made it just too easy. “I don’t make _porn noises_ while I’m eating, Sammy. I save those for other occasions.”

“Ewwww, _Deaaan,_ why are you like this?” Sam complained, then shook his head, leaning forward to talk to Cas as if Dean wasn’t even _there._ “I dunno. I give up. Maybe _you_ can teach Dean some manners, Castiel?”

This time, Dean’s beer went down the wrong pipe.

Dean didn’t know which was worse, Sammy just snickering as he watched Dean hack and cough, or Castiel reaching over to give him one tentative pat between the shoulder blades with an expression of fierce concentration on his face.

“I think Dean has his own concept of being polite,” Cas finally answered, and turned back to take a big bite of his burger, and Dean would have sworn that the fucker’s blue eyes were _twinkling_.

_Sonofabitch._

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> Who here thinks Sam suspects, raise your hand…?
> 
> We're almost there, I swear! There is going to be one more story in this series. It's going to have plot. These boyos are going to get their heads out of the sand if it kills me.
> 
> Harold’s Chicken Shack legitimately does have very tasty wings. They are delicious and crisp and the sauce is amazing. If you have the choice—try the Bronzeville or Chatham locations, and ask for lemon pepper on your fries and wings, with mild sauce on the side. Eat them right there, or in your car before you go home.
> 
> I dream of Au Cheval burgers. I also dream of their garlic aioli. While the single cheeseburger by itself is very satisfying, the way to do it is a single cheeseburger with bacon and a fried egg, extra pickles, french fries, a draft rootbeer, and someone to help roll you out the door after you’re done eating all of that.
> 
> (Though for what it’s worth—Cas’s choice in Greenwich Village, Minetta Tavern, also has phenomenal burgers, so clearly he’ll have to bring Dean sometime.)
> 
> Thank you again to everyone who's taken the time to read, and comment—I treasure each one and it means so much to me!


End file.
